Humboldt Hens

Flying the Coop

2006-06-23T15:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I have reached that point in every blogger's life when it is finally time to make the move from Blogger to TypePad. I'm also rolling all three of my blogs (Dirt, Humboldt Hens, and Worms of Endearment) into one, and in addition to writing about the garden, the chickens, and the worms, I'll also be writing about the book tour and lots of other topics related to my new book, Flower Confidential. My new blog home is here:

http://blog.amystewart.com/

and I promise there will be plenty of good chicken stuff there, in addition to all the Humboldt Hens archives.

And last, but certainly not least, you'll find me over at GardenRant a few times a week. We're having a lot of fun, so come join us.

Great Moments in Chicken Videos

2006-06-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

This is my gift to you on a Monday when we'd all rather be outdoors. Enjoy.

Nike Angry Chicken - Google Video

Garden Rant Takes Over the World

2006-06-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I started talking with Susan Harris of Takoma Gardener and Michele Owens of Sign of the Shovel about a modest little idea we had to stage a horticultural revolt. We were tired of what the mainstream gardening media has to offer--warmed-over garden tips, repurposed press releases about the ten thousandth new coleus on the market, dull little essays about the wonders of spring--and we were convinced that bloggers could overthrow the gardening establishment in the way that they are transforming coverage of politics and current affairs. (Witness the success of the YearlyKos convention. Not that I want to be the DailyKos of gardening. I'd much rather be the Gawker of gardening. But one thing at a time.)

Like all good revolutionaries, we began by writing a manifesto. You can read the whole thing on our site, but I'll touch on a few of my favorite points here:

--We are convinced that gardening MATTERS. Get us out of the Lifestyle section and as far away from home decorating as possible. We're talking about how we interact with the plant kingdom, not how to choose a throw pillow. This shit is important!

--We are flabbergasted at the idea of "no maintenance" gardens. If I have to read one more magazine article about Easy Container Gardens in 10 Minutes or Less, I may actually go bury MYSELF in the perennial border. Gardening is something you DO. It's not something you buy and arrange around the exterior of your home in between fluffing the aforementioned throw pillows.

--We are delighted by people with a passion for plants. Show some excitement! Have an opinion! Fall in love! Get mad! If you're bored, put your pen down and go outside. Just don't bore us, too.

Are you with me? All right, then. Follow me over to Garden Rant, where I'll be blogging a couple times a week. Some of my favorite new features include:

Ask Dr. Bleedingheart--horticultural advice for the lovelorn. Send in your melodramas today.
I Don't Have a Garden, But I Watch One On TV--reviews of garden television and Internet garden videos. (We'll cover podcasts and radio too, so if it's good, send it our way.)
Taking Your Gardening Dollar--product reviews, rip-offs, and vicarious horticultural shopping experiences.
You! We're looking for guest bloggers, so if you have something brilliant to say, we hope you'll consider saying it on Garden Rant first. Come rant with us!

Boo Boo Succumbs

2006-05-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

Y'all might remember my earlier post about the chicken who went on Jay Leno. Well, I'm afraid that Boo Boo has died. I'm sorry to be the one to bring you this news. Those close to the chicken say that she had seizures, which may have been the cause of her earlier near-drowning experience.

ABC News: Boo Boo the Chicken Dies

Bess is My Emotional Support Chicken

2006-05-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

This just in from the New York Times:

"At French Roast on upper Broadway, however, two women sat down to brunch with dogs in tow: a golden retriever and a Yorkie toted in a bag.

They both said that their animals were emotional service dogs," said Gil Ohana, the manager, explaining why he let them in. "One of them actually carried a doctor's letter."

That's right, folks. People are now getting away with bringing their annoying, yapping little dogs EVERYWHERE with them because they have a doctor's note. The story continues:

"I had never heard of emotional support animals before," said Steve Hanson, an owner of 12 restaurants including Blue Fin and Blue Water Grill in Manhattan. "And now all of a sudden in the last several months, we're hearing this."

Fortunately, a few people see how silly this is, including this guide dog trainer, who said: "I've had teenagers approach me wanting to get their dogs certified. This isn't cute and is a total insult to the disabled community. They are ruining it for people who need it."

and a shrink says:

"If a person can't entertain the idea of going out without an animal, that would suggest an extreme anxiety level," she said, "and he or she should probably be on medication, in psychotherapy or both."

And it's not always dogs.

"These days people rely on a veritable Noah's Ark of support animals. Tami McLallen, a spokeswoman for American Airlines, said that although dogs are the most common service animals taken onto planes, the airline has had to accommodate monkeys, miniature horses, cats and even an emotional support duck. "Its owner dressed it up in clothes," she recalled. "

Miniature horses? On a plane? Are you kidding me? Why don't they choose something small, like an emotional support lizard?

All right, if she gets to have an emotional support duck, I am totally making Bess my emotional support chicken. I need this for my mental health. Just think, fresh eggs everywhere I go.

"Waiter, a martini for me, and some cracked corn for the hen, please."

Chicken blogging!

2006-05-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

I was taking a picture for a post about garden blogging over on Dirt, when the chickens wandered over to see what I'd brought them. Perhaps we should set up an old computer out there in the coop and see what the girls come up with. (Do you suppose they touch type or hunt and peck? Sorry, couldn't resist.)

Women! What do they want?

2006-05-21T21:31:00.000-07:00

Scott comes outside and finds himself surrounded by a flock of very demanding girls. Bess, as always, flies right up to his face, just assuming that he'll hold out an arm as a landing perch about the time she arrives.

In other news...Dolley laid one of those strange shellless eggs the other day. It was just like what happened with Bess. She looked really uncomfortable, would hardly move, and then (not in her nesting box, just out in the garden, which is very unusual) out came this weird thing. It broke on the way out, so first came egg white, then yolk, then this rubbery membrane which Eleanor grabbed in her beak and ran around with in the garden in a sort of victory lap. Scott watched the whole thing and was quite horrified. (we took the rubbery thing away from Eleanor--you do not want chickens to develop a taste for eggs. In fact, they tried to gobble up the bits of white and yolk still on the ground. What were they thinking? "Hey, look what came out of Dolley's butt. Let's eat it.")

Fortunately, Dolley felt better immediately (wouldn't you?) and went back to laying eggs with shells a day or two later. The only real health risk here would have been if she seemed to still have egg bits inside of her, but fortunately we didn't have to go exploring--seems like it all came out on its own.

Ah, farm life!

Sunday New York Times

2006-05-14T15:14:00.000-07:00

Check out my op-ed piece in today's New York Times. You'll be hearing more from me in the months to come about my new book, Flower Confidential, but this will give you a preview.

Every Day is Respect for Chickens Day Around Here

2006-05-04T22:50:00.001-07:00

United Poultry Concerns has declared May 4 International Respect for Chickens Day. I know that their name sounds like the name of some industry puppet group, but in fact, this is a group that advocates for better treatment of chickens even as they are being raised for slaughter. Good people. And here are some random highlights from their press release:

For International Respect for Chickens Day, educators, students, office workers and activists are encouraged to do an ACTION for chickens – everything from showing the movie Chicken Run to setting up a school library display to leafleting on a busy street corner.

A Minneapolis group is holding a Most Beautiful Chicken Photo contest. (No, I could not find it online. Dang.) (Update: Thanks to Molly for this link.)

"Chickens are lively birds who have been torn from the leafy world in which they evolved. We want chickens to be restored to their green world and not be eaten."

The idea for International Respect for Chickens Day traces to famed Le Show host and star of The Simpsons, Harry Shearer, who proclaimed Sunday, May 14, 2000 - Mother's Day - National Respect the Chicken Day because hens are justly praised as exemplars of devoted motherhood.

In Letters from an American Farmer, a study of American colonial society published in 1782, St. John de Crevecoeur wrote about chickens, "I never see an egg brought to my table but I feel penetrated with the wonderful change it would have undergone but for my gluttony; it might have been a gentle, useful hen leading her chickens with a care and vigilance which speaks shame to many women. A cock perhaps, arrayed with the most majestic plumes, tender to his mate, bold, courageous, endowed with an astonishing instinct, with thoughts, with memory, and every distinguishing characteristic of the reason of man."

Chickens are sentient creatures and have feelings of their own.

You're damn right. Go kiss a chicken, people.

U.S. Newswire : Releases : "International Respect for Chickens Day Celebrates Chickens"

Sign of the Shovel: Peeping Mad

2006-05-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

There's a good discussion going on over at Sign of the Shovel about the noise backyard hens make. I have often wondered if our neighbors were going to get fed up and come knocking on the door. Our girls can get quite riled up just after, and sometimes just before, they lay an egg (wouldn't you?), and with four of them laying almost every day, it can be noisy.

But I sit still and listen to the sounds of our neighborhood. Sometimes, when I hear the chickens calling at 7 or 8 a.m. (a sign that I need to get up and go let them run around outside), I can hear them for a minute, but then the sound is drowned out by a passing car, a barking dog, or even the cry of a seagull flying overhead. And it is certainly drowned out by a lawn mower, a power tool, a scooter, or any other little motorized gizmo revving up nearby.

And we won't even mention the loud parties on weekends, especially in the summer, that degenerate into drunken shouting in the streets at 2 a.m. We tolerate it quite gamely, secretly wishing we were invited to the parties, not that we'd really go, and god knows we'd have to bring our own booze--and feeling glad that we are, at the very least, the sort of people who like living in a diverse, interesting, not-too-fancy neighborhood where people can have rowdy parties or, god forbid, lawn mowers.

Sign of the Shovel: Peeping Mad

The Jay Leno Arkadelphia Chicken Video

2006-04-16T21:10:00.000-07:00

This is so brilliant, folks. Thanks to Brian & Enis for sending a link so I could share it with you. Terry Bradshaw's the other guest, and he may be the funniest part of the whole deal.

The Arkadelphia Chicken

Easter Eggs!

2006-04-16T18:35:00.000-07:00

Thanks, girls!

And if you're in the mood for some truly fancy organic dyed easter eggs, (I know, Easter is over, this information would have been useful a week ago), check out this great article on all-natural egg dyes made of spinach, berries, cabbage and more.

Oh, and someone asked what chicken scratch was. Good question! It's a mixture of hard, whole grains like corn and wheat that chickens absolutely love to eat. You can't feed it to them all the time--this is like candy to them, not a balanced meal--but as a bribe or a reward it's great. I think the reason it's called "scratch" is that you can toss a handful of it on the ground and they love scratching around for it. We use chicken scratch to round the girls up after they've been free-ranging and put them back in their run. They will follow a handful of scratch anywhere.

Sweet Abigail

2006-04-16T18:31:00.000-07:00

She's so eager to do her trick. The trick is simply that she hops from the back of this chair onto your arm for a treat. Unlike the smaller birds, she can't get herself off the ground (or, as Scott says, she can but she doesn't try hard enough...), but she has figured out how to do this. Anytime I go near the deck, she runs over and hops on the back of the chair and looks at me hopefully. It's a little heartbreaking somehow. Of course I am unable to resist and she manages to con me out of quite a bit of chicken scratch this way.

The Coop O-Rama

2006-04-11T22:34:00.000-07:00

I totally want one of these. Don't my girls deserve an airy, lofty A-frame?

Find out more at The Easy Chicken. They also sell lots of interesting poultry supplies. It's actually a good thing I don't have much time on my hands, or I'd be shopping for them, drafting up architectural plans, and most of all, cruising the feed stores to look at the baby peeps, all of whom want very much to come home with me.

Now what?

2006-04-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

So I'm at the feed store picking up another bag of organic layer pellets. There's only one store in town that offers the organic stuff, so I make a trip out there every couple of months for a bag. This time the woman behind the counter says, "We have organic scratch now, too."

Well, that's great! I'd asked about organic scratch before and it hadn't been available. But apparently I wasn't the only one asking for it, so they contacted their supplier and now they're carrying it. She seemed so pleased that she'd been able to respond to the needs of her customers. That's why we support small, local businesses, right?

So I said sure, I'd take some organic scratch, even though we had plenty at home. I was expecting a little 5 or 10 pound back, which is what I usually buy, but when I went out to the car, they were loading this in the trunk.

"Uh...don't you have it in little bags?" I asked. I have four hens and they get a small handful of scratch as a treat once or twice a day. It takes forever to get through the little bags.

"Nope!" the guy loading my car said cheerfully. So I just smiled and closed the trunk, then drove home wondering how many years it would take to get through this bag, much less where I would put it in the meantime. Anybody need some scratch? I've got plenty to spare.

How quickly they grow up!

2006-04-07T09:52:00.000-07:00

The girls are all one year old. They're officially hens now. Ah, time flies...

I was at the feed store last week admiring the new crop of baby chicks and it was all I could do not to stuff a couple in my coat pocket and take them home. Here's a little trick that will melt your heart: walk up to the brooder at the feed store and cluck at them like a hen would. Fifty baby chicks will come running towards you, pushing their beaks through the wire and peeping, "Are you my mommy?"

The Arkadelphia Chicken--Mouth-to-Beak Resuscitation

2006-04-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

I wish I could share this woman's appearance on Jay Leno, which my aunt June e-mailed to me, but I don't have a way to post a video on the blog and I haven't found it online yet. It's about the funniest piece of television you've ever seen. I'll keep looking.

Meanwhile, you can meet Boo Boo and his rescuers here.

Today's THV KTHV Little Rock

Faster Circuit Board Built With Chicken Feathers

2006-04-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Roni for this one: a circuit board made of chicken feathers and soy. Yeah, we just build electronics with whatever we've got laying around the house. (get it?)

Apparently " the chicken feathers make it faster because they have a higher dielectric constant, which means the electrons running around the board will not have to fight with the board to get from a to b. The less electronic interference means faster point to point communication. Also, the thermal coefficient of expansion is lower, so less stress is placed on components once the board heats up (it does not expand as much because keratin expands less than glass/poly resin)."

Got it? Good.

Treehugger: Faster Circuit Board Built With Chicken Feathers

More crop trouble

2006-04-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

Man, this chicken thing is complicated. Dolley recovered perfectly from her impacted crop (if you're surfing around for crop info, check the February and March 2006 archives), but about three weeks later, we saw Return of Big Crop. I had heard that once a crop gets stretched out, it'll stay that way, but this time instead of containing a hard mass, her crop was softer and full of liquid, like a water balloon.

This could be a sour crop, a problem caused not by a blockage but by some sort of ailment. Antibiotics can bring on a fungal infection; for that you feed them yogurt or medicate. But it also could be bacterial or even some kind of virus.

One thing you can try is to gently turn the chicken upside down and try to get her to puke up everything in her crop. This sounds like a strange and ill-advised exercise, but yesterday we did try turning her mostly upside down and pushing gently on the crop. She tolerated it, but nothing came up.

There are also Espon salt flushes and molasses flushes, where you mix one of those ingredients with water, force it down their throat with a dropper (making sure not to get it in their lungs), and maybe that helps move everything through. But we have not had much luck forcing things in her beak, and the whole idea of putting the dropper far enough in her mouth to make sure the water didn't go down her windpipe just seemed scary.

Adding vitamins and electrolytes to their water is another recommendation--that's easy. I bought a little packet at the feed store and they'll all get vitamins for a couple weeks.

Feeding them yogurt is another easy recommendation to try. They all like it, and it's good for them. One lesson learned: never try to hide medicine in a food you want them to eat again later. Dolley was very wary of the yogurt at first because of vivid memories of the recent past--but she did eventually eat some.

We're also going to make an extra effort to keep their coop clean. Dolley's got watery droppings, too--the vet did see coccidia, little protozoa that live in their droppings, under the microscope, and prescribed antibiotics which we were never able to get down her. They're supposed to develop a natural immunity to coccidia, but with this wet weather, it could really flourish and overwhelm their immune systems. We're reluctant to medicate because you are supposed to let them build up resistance.

So: extra-clean coop, yogurt, vitamins. Fortunately she's acting normal, so as long as she's not showing any other signs of illness, we'll watch and wait. Any other ideas?

Chocolate-filled eggshells

2006-03-30T15:38:00.000-08:00

You go, Martha! For a while I was worried that Martha Stewart had lost her enthusiasm for the obscure and difficult, and was instead going for least-common-denominator tips and recipes to appeal to the masses. No more! Now we're blowing out eggs (using a drill, of course), and filling them with melted chocolate that must be kept at EXACTLY 88 degrees while it's being drizzled into the eggshell.

Woo-hoo! I will NEVER do it, even though I have four of Dolley's lovely blue eggs all hollowed out because we decided not to eat them while she was on medication--but I will think of it, dream of it, and wish I WOULD do it! That's what I need Martha for!

Wonderful way to make chocolate-filled eggshells - 03/25/06 - The Detroit News

Chickens Elude Authorities

2006-03-30T13:06:00.000-08:00

This just in:

"Members of Manatee County Animal Services were unable to round up the feral chickens that have been roaming 16th Avenue West in the Village of the Arts.

Enforcement supervisor Larry Adams and field officers Jerry Hill and Joyce Bentley tried for nearly two hours to no avail Monday.

"We'd try to catch them and they'd go in flight," Adams said. "They didn't respond to the cracked corn we'd spread, either. We had a castnet, but couldn't get close enough. We're going to try to work on some other avenues and try again."

Well, yeah! They're not stupid, you know! Chickens have a powerful genetic memory that encourages them to resist any organized attempts to round them up and take them away.

Bradenton Herald 03/28/2006 Chickens elude authorities

Another chicken story

2006-03-27T23:08:00.000-08:00

This lovely piece of writing is from my friend Beverly Levine:

We leap up and spread our arms like graceful wings. Our aging bodies are agile, light. We are in a swimming pool. Here, with the clear water to hold us up, gravity is forgotten, and we soar. We are mermaid ballet dancers, full of grace and beauty.

We love the exercise at the spa, but conversation is the best part. This morning, Dorothy's usually serene face is drawn.

"I'm worried about my chicken." Dorothy hops on one foot and then the other, her hands waving back and forth in the water like seaweed. The mermaids around her stop leaping. Dorothy has several Bantam chickens in her back yard. She also has a pond full of koi.

"The chicken fell in the pond," she says, "and it wasn't breathing."

"Oh, gosh! What did you do?"

"I gave it artificial respiration."

Imagination fails. "How?"

"Well, I put it on its back, and pushed on its chest, and blew in its mouth."

"Blew in its beak?"

"Yes. I just held it open a little and blew in."

We gently wave our arms, trying to decide whether or not to laugh at the mental picture of Dorothy, with her elegant blonde hair and sweet mouth, blowing into the beak of a chicken. But first, we need to know the poor animal's fate.

"So, is it all right?"

"I guess so. It started breathing. I wrapped it up in a towel to keep it warm, and told my husband to keep an eye on it."

"You saved its life!" Bobbie gives Dorothy a hug. We resume our leaps and jumps across the pool, and the story makes its way from one mermaid to another. We hear ripples of incredulous laughter up and down the pool.

When I get home that morning, my husband asks, "How was exercise?" If I tell him, will he believe me?

A Chicken Moat!

2006-03-24T09:03:00.000-08:00

Oh, I loooooooove this! If you have not checked out Make magazine, get over there. Most of their ideas involve doing cool stuff with high-tech gadgets, but some of it is delightfully, low-tech, like this plan for a garden surrounded by a chicken moat. Let the birds patrol the border, eat bugs, etc.

They'd get the benefits of free-ranging without destroying the garden. Other ideas to really make this fabulous:

1. Plant a Row for the Chickens--be sure to plant leafy greens right up against the moat, so the chicks can stick they heads through the fencing and graze. Grow peas up the fence for this, too. If you really want to make them happy, how about strawberries? I've heard that French farmers feed their chickens marigold petals to get that bright orange yolk--how about planting marigold & calendula, too?

2. Cover crops, pollinator crops, green manure: fence off one section of the moat at a time and plant clover, rye, vetch, fava. Let it all bloom! You'll attract pollinators to the garden and it's great for the soil. Once it's done blooming, take down the fence and let the chickens turn it into compost. Keep a couple sections going at a time so you always have something in bloom to attract the good bugs.

3. Speaking of compost...just toss everything in the moat! Brilliant!

4. Don't forget to screen the top of the moat, too, so the chickens will stay in and the hawks and racoons will stay out.

Honey, can I have a place in the country? Pleeeeeze?

MAKE: Blog: HOW TO - Make a "Chicken Moat"

A traffic jam!

2006-03-23T15:28:00.000-08:00

Four hens trying to lay at once! It rarely happens that the Egg Stork arrives at the same time for all four of them, but when it does, it's chaos. We have two nesting boxes (each bird does not need her own box; they usually take turns and besides they develop a preferred box) and as you can see, the box on the right is the box everyone wants to use.

Abigail was there first, and that didn't stop Eleanaor from just settling in on top of her as if she wasn't there. Bess got box #2, to the great chagrin of Dolley, who was left in a sort of "waiting room" next door. Scott snapped this photo the very second Bess laid her little green egg, and as you can see, Dolley is already poking her beak around the corner as if to say, "Are you done in there yet? Move it!"

Eventually everyone but Abigail laid an egg. Maybe she just gave up in disgust.

But Does it Eat Snails?

2006-03-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

Speaking of keeping a chicken in the house...check out the amazing Chicken Alarm Clock, courtesy of my friends Roni & Jessica. It crows and lays eggs to wake you up in the morning. Fabulous! I may have to have one in spite of my aversion to alarm clocks.

Le Futur Amazing Gifts

Ah, the drama!

2006-03-21T20:59:00.000-08:00

It's rare to catch one of these dramatic moments, but I just happened to have the camera in my hand when Bess popped into the laundry room (perhaps to have a look at the cat food? or a return to her ancestral home in the downstairs bathroom?) and on her way out, who should she run into but Loretta.

Loretta: Don't move, Chicken Little. I've got you right where I want you.

Bess: Nice try, hairball. We all know who's in charge around here.

Loretta: They'll never let you move into the house, you know.

Bess: Oh, yeah? Guess what, Whiskas? Chickens actually sleep at night. We don't run up and down the hall like our tail's on fire at three a.m.. And in the morning? We make them breakfast. Then we go outside and eat weeds and snails. You should try it sometime.

Loretta: Oh yeah, like I've got that kind of time. Out of my way, birdbrain. I'm late for my nap.

Caboodle

2006-03-20T18:35:00.000-08:00

Here's the Caboodle. (More on this below)

At the Garden Show

2006-03-20T18:34:00.000-08:00

Here's Bob and one of his chickens. She looks remarkably like our Bess except she's about twice the size as Bess.

The Chick-N-Caboodle

2006-03-20T18:16:00.000-08:00

I just got back from the San Francisco Garden Show where, for the second year in a row, I saw Bob La Mar of Little Valley Farms selling his chicken coops made from wine barrels. It's a clever idea and he's got the perfect approach for city-dwellers: a ready-made coop with nesting boxes, food, waterer, treats, and three young Araucanas who are hand-raised and just getting ready to lay. For $975, you get the whole thing delivered to you, and he'll answer your questions by phone or e-mail.

I love the idea, Bob's a really friendly and knowledgeable guy, and his chickens are beautiful. I must say, however, that there are a couple things to consider if you'd like to buy a Caboodle (and you'd have to live in Northern California to take advantage of the delivery service, by the way).

First, I don't really want my hens to free-range all day. Even though I'm at home most of the time, I'd be worried about one of them hopping up on a fence and trotting down the alley, or a dog finding its way in the garden through a loose board, or a hawk swooping down. Also, my garden can't handle the wear-and-tear of three chickens, twelve hours a day. The Caboodle does come with a very small collapsible poultry run, but I'd want something a little bigger if I'm going to keep them confined for any period of time.

Second, I'd rather not have them locked up in such a small space, with no food or water, waiting for me to come let them out or put them away. What if I need to leave in the afternoon and I won't be home until midnight? What if I sleep late or I'm sick or otherwise not able to let them out first thing in the morning? Or what if I'm out of town and my pet-sitter is running late?

Both of these problems could be solved in part by setting the Caboodle inside a screened-in run. That way, they can wander in and out of their coop during the day to lay eggs or seek shelter from the rain, and if they put themselves to bed and I'm not there to lock them up, I at least know they're surrounded by a sturdy enclosure that will deter predators to a certain extent.

But by the time you build that sturdy enclosure (with wire buried underground to keep critters from tunneling under, and wire overhead to keep hawks & racoons out), you've spent some more money, so you might add it all up and ask yourself if a traditional coop wouldn't be a better way to go.

I'm not saying the Caboodle's a bad idea. In fact, I'm enchanted with it. But do consider your space and ask yourself where you'll put the girls' food and water, where they can seek shelter from the weather, and what parts of your deck, porch, garden, etc. you want them to have access too. (I'm pretty forgiving when it comes to chicken poop, but some people might not want it on their flagstone patio.) Also, if you are going to let them free-range all day and you're not going to be home to watch over them, ask yourself how heartbroken you'd be if something happened to one of them. Things do happen. They're chickens.

A Chicken Tractor in Michigan

2006-03-16T15:29:00.000-08:00

Aw, I never got to have this much fun in school. Imagine all the attention these chickens get.

Green Thumbs Around the World, USA

Products to stop feather picking?

2006-03-13T20:45:00.000-08:00

Has anyone tried any of these products you can put on your chickens to stop picking? Bess, who is really the most interesting and most personable of our birds, has found herself at the bottom of the pecking order, and when she gets out of line, the other birds are fond of reaching over and plucking a feather out of her neck. I just don't like the way it looks--she was so much cuter with her little beard. I worry that the Hot Pick will sting her bare skin, so should I try the Blue Kote? The Pine Tar seems like it's designed for more serious wounds.

(Scott came upstairs while I was writing this post and just laughed at the idea that I would buy something like this for our chickens. I said, "Honey, I'm sure she doesn't like having her neck all exposed like that when the other girls all have feathers. She needs products! This is a chick thing." He agreed that it was probably best if he just stayed out of it. I can already tell that I will be the one in charge of Bess' nightly beauty ritual.)

McMurray Hatchery - Anti Pick

And there was much rejoicing!

2006-03-10T16:30:00.000-08:00

Good news! Dolley's impacted crop is entirely better. The medication from the vet (Metoclopramide for those of you just tuning in) must have worked. This is entirely due to Scott's persistence--I have been very busy with work and hardly able to look up, while Scott has been chasing Dolley around the garden with little droppers of medication.

Today, quite suddenly, her crop was empty and back to normal. We hope this mysterious mass will move through her system OK, but not to worry, I won't be analyzing her poop online here.

But that's not all the news. Just as her crop was clearing up, she's started to get broody! (A broody hen, for hormal reasons, sits and sits on her nest in the vain hope that her eggs will hatch. It's bad for the hen because she might not even get up to eat or drink, and it wreaks havoc with the use of the nesting boxes.)

A couple days ago I saw her sitting in her box around 9 am, and again at 1:30 pm. Don't know if she'd been there all day, but she was certainly sitting on her egg, Abigail's egg, and the wooden egg (more on wooden eggs later.) She did hop right up to seize the opportunity to free-range, but I wondered if this was the start of an episode of broodiness.

Today Scott noticed her sitting in her box for what seemed like an unusually long time. He finally kicked her out of the box, with some protests from her, and she laid an egg right in the doorway, as if to say, "I WAS getting around to it!"

Any ideas for breaking a broody hen? We've heard that you should do what you can to get her out of the box and doing something else, and also to change the bedding and otherwise break up the routine of the nesting box. So that's what we've done so far.

Dolley

2006-03-10T09:56:00.000-08:00

I'm doing little 5x7 paintings of each bird. Here's Dolley. Even in this picture you can see her oversized crop, poor girl. Scott got more medication because they gave us just enough for the doses we were supposed to give her, but of course most of that didn't actually go down the hatch. So we're trying again.

It hailed this morning--big, pea-sized hail that completely covered the garden. The chickens have let it be known that they would prefer a more temperate climate. Or at least hot oatmeal in the morning, something that more devoted chicken owners than I have been known to deliver to their birds on cold mornings.

Mesmerizing chickens

2006-03-06T20:45:00.000-08:00

I am fascinated by this idea of mesmerizing a chicken (see Sara's comment, previous post) and I have heard of this before but had forgotten all about it. One method is to hold the chicken down with her beak pressed firmly on the ground (now see, already this is sounding tricky), and slowly draw a line in the dirt with your finger straight away from her beak, 2 or 3 feet. When you release her, the chicken will lie there with her eyes open, not moving, from 15 seconds to several hours, if undisturbed.

Or you can tuck the chicken's head under her wing and rock her gently for several seconds. Then you set her down very carefully, and she will stay that way.

See, what bothers me about this is having this level of control over the bird and not really understanding why or how it works. Kind of like--oh, I don't know, what would it be like?--having the authority to send your military into war without really understanding the gestalt of the thing. (or knowing what "gestalt" means. or "mesmerize," for that matter.)

I digress. The point is that it's a lot of power to wield over a little bird. What if I send her off into avian la-la land and she never comes back? Or what if she's not quite right ever again after that?

There's also the practical matter of forcing her head into any position at all. They are big, sturdy birds (Dolley weighed four pounds at the vet, by the way), but their heads are surprisingly small little things, like little walnut shells only more fragile, and their necks are hardly anything at all, just feathers and one skinny column of bone. I just hate to push too hard.

Dang, I wish I'd just insisted on watching the vet do it. Should've brought my camera, too. I thought the vet wouldn't have approved, but hey, it's my money, right? Might as well get something out of it!

I do like the use of the word "mesmerize." It's a lovely word. Not "stun," not "stupefy," not "sedate," but "mesmerize." As if she'll be fascinated. Spellbound. That's a nice thought.

Has anyone else ever tried it?

Time for the vet

2006-03-03T16:35:00.000-08:00

Well, after a couple of weeks of Dolley's crop being enlarged, we decided to take her to the vet. It might just go away on its own, but if she went downhill in a hurry, we'd probably regret not having it checked out. Besides, we thought it would be helpful to get to know a chicken vet.

There's one bird vet in town, so that's where we went. I worried that they would think we were crazy for bringing a chicken in, but in fact they were delighted and, like all good vets, acted as if ours was the most beautiful and well-behaved bird they'd ever seen.

In fact, Dolley was very well-behaved. She squawked a little when we put her in the box, but once the lid was on she rode very quietly, and in the examining room she perched on one of our arms and hardly made a peep.

The news looked grim at first--the vet thought that the lump in her crop felt very hard and fixed, like a tumor, and her droppings looked tumor-like. So they ran a few tests on the droppings and gave her an x-ray (we did not get to watch this to see how they'd pull it off, but she said they would "mesmerize" her and it would only take a minute, which it did. How do you mesmerize a chicken?)

The x-ray showed that the mass was probably just food that wasn't moving through her system, so she prescribed a drug called Metoclopramide which is supposed to get the crop moving and push things along. They also found coccidia in her droppings--this is a very common protozoa that chickens are mostly immune to once they get older. There are many different species of coccidia with many different symptoms. For that she prescribed an antiobiotic, and recommended that we put all the birds on medicated feed to make sure everybody stays healthy. (Baby chicks are always on medicated feed because they are less resistant to the coccidia, which flourish in droppings.)

Dolley Drinks the Kool-Aid

2006-03-03T16:23:00.000-08:00

Here's Dolley standing on my hands (it seemed to make her happy) eating her medicine-laced rice. Normally our chickens love white rice, but Dolley quickly caught on that there was medicine here and, after picking out whatever non-medicated grains she could find, she gave up on it. We also tried squirting some on a piece of bread, but she figured that one out, too.

Next stop: applesauce. I really, really don't want to have to try forcing her beak open to squirt medicine down her throat.

Any other ideas, chicken people?

Meet the Poultry Wiki

2006-03-01T12:49:00.000-08:00

As you may know, a "wiki" is a kind of open site where anyone can post and update information, often used for encyclopedia-style sites. Well, now there's a poultry wiki, where I found some useful information on impacted crops. Check it out!

Main Page - The Poultry Keeper Wiki

Update on Dolley

2006-02-28T08:21:00.000-08:00

This morning, after about 15 hours without food overnight, Dolley's crop was about half the size it was last night--a little smaller than a golf ball, and squishy. So it seems like she does have something in there she can't digest, but some food is getting down. I'm hoping she ate some kind of weed that is just hard to break down, and that it'll get gradually better.

Here she is having some plain yogurt. The idea is to get some healthy active cultures in her digestive tract to help her with digestion. Plus, she loves yogurt.

2006-02-28T08:17:00.000-08:00

The other chickens all love yogurt, too.

Sour crop? Impacted crop? Nothing at all?

2006-02-27T19:46:00.000-08:00

Dolley's developed this monster crop lately (for you non-poultry types, the crop is an organ just under the skin on the chicken's chest where food goes for the first stage of digestion), and we're not sure if it's impacted or what. It's sort of soft and squishy, but always big--larger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball. She's also making this swallowing move like she's trying to get something down.

She could have eaten some long strands of grass that she can't digest. She could have eaten some string or whatever other odd thing a chicken might turn up in the garden--a bit of plastic, a rubber band, who knows. It's possible that she's got a little infection. We've been watching her for a week and it hasn't gotten better or worse, but it seems like we should take some action.

First step was to remove their food when they went to bed tonight. That way, we can check her in the morning when the crop should, in theory, be empty. That'll give us an idea of what might be stuck in there.

Actually, I take that back. The first step was to try to smell her breath. This is tricky--it's not easy to get a hen to open her beak for you, much less to get your nose in there before she snaps it shut again. The idea is that if she has a sour crop (old, nasty food stuck in the crop that she can't digest because of a blockage), we'd be able to smell it.

To tell you the truth, I don't know what a hen's breath is supposed to smell like, but we didn't smell anything.

Then, after we check out her empty crop in the morning, we can try feeding her yogurt, which contains healthy cultures that might help her digest some of this stuff.

All the options after that are a little weird. You can force some mineral oil down their beaks to lubricate things. You can force a "flush" of water and Epson salts, which might loosen things up, then turn the bird upside down (as in, beak down towards the ground), massage the crop, and try to get her to spit it up.

Yeah, you heard me. Induce chicken vomiting.

Another alternative is to perform surgery. I'm not kidding, real poultry farmers actually do this sort of thing. You make a little slit in the skin where the crop is and squeeze the stuff out. Apparently this is not terribly painful for the chicken (how do they know that?) and the skin heals up without stitches.

I'm not sure I'd survive that procedure, even if all I had to do was hold the chicken still while Scott made the cut. So let's hope it doesn't come to that. And by the way, if you're reading this because you need advice about how to treat your chicken's crop, please visit The Coop and talk to some experts. Don't take my word for it.

Further reading and illustrations on crop issues: Sour crop Blog 1976design.com

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

2006-02-25T13:55:00.000-08:00

Looks like we've got a rat in the chicken coop. Actually, not in the coop itself, but in the other half of the shed where we keep the food. (the coop has wire mesh, concrete floors, and other barriers to keep critters out.) This alleged rat actually chewed through a plastic pitcher to get at the scratch. We'll have to keep it in a glass jar or something...and I'm wondering how long it will be before it chews through the plastic storage tub we've got their regular food in.

Rare as hens' teeth? Don't count on it!

2006-02-23T19:42:00.000-08:00

Turns out maybe chickens could have teeth, after all.

Scientists have discovered a mutant chicken with a full set of crocodile-like chompers. The mutant chick, called Talpid, also had severe limb defects and died before hatching. It was discovered 50 years ago, but no one had ever examined its mouth until now.

The researchers recently created more Talpids by tweaking the genes of normal chickens to grow teeth. "What we discovered were teeth similar to those of crocodiles—not surprising as birds are the closest living relatives of the reptile," said Mark Ferguson of the University of Manchester."

By making a few changes to the expression of certain molecules in the pathway, the researchers were able to induce tooth growth in normal developing chickens. These teeth also looked like reptilian teeth and shared many of the same genetic traits, supporting the scientists' hypothesis. None of these chickens were allowed to hatch.

What would a chicken do with a tooth? Chickens do have remarkably few tools at their disposal--a beak and a set of claws, that's it. I guess they'd figure out a way to put teeth to use. They do seem to feel that they should have more resources than they do--when I am out digging in the garden, they stand around looking at my shovel with great interest, as if they're thinking, "We have to use our toes for that, but she has a tool!"

LiveScience.com - Surprise: Chickens Can Grow Teeth

Now All I Need is a Title

2006-02-21T17:09:00.000-08:00

We take a break from our regularly scheduled chicken programming for a special announcement:

I need some help choosing a title for my next book. It's just four or five little words--you wouldn't think it would be so hard, but my editor and I have been taxing our poor little brains for weeks now and we still haven't settled on the perfect title.

So now I've set up an online survey and I'd really appreciate it if you'd go take the survey and encourage your friends to do the same. You won't have to log in or provide any personal information.

Amy's Next Book: The Survey

If you have more ideas than what the survey can handle, feel free to post a comment or send me an e-mail.

By the way, I'd like to thank the author Po Bronson for the inspiration for this survey. He went through a similar process with the cover design for his last book, Why Do I Love These People?.

Teaching Chickens Tricks

2006-02-17T19:26:00.000-08:00

Scott has been teaching the chickens a trick. The trick is simply that they fly up to his arm to get a piece of bread. Dolley and Bess picked up on it right away (Bess in particular needs no encouragement to fly up to your arms or shoulders), but Eleanor can't seem to get airborne and Abigail would simply prefer the bread to be handed to her, thank you very much.

The problem is getting the girls to only do the trick on command. As it is, anytime they see Scott, they fly up and demand their bread. Another problem is getting them to actually hop back down after the trick is over. As far as they're concerned, they could spend the entire afternoon like this. Chickens don't really grasp the concept of doing something only once.

2006-02-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

Two hens are better than one.

2006-02-17T19:24:00.000-08:00

Eleanor would like to do the trick, but she can't seem to get off the ground.

Hawaiian Hens

2006-02-09T09:25:00.000-08:00

This just in from my friend Marty, who had the nerve to go vacation on a tropical island in the middle of winter (without me):

Did you know there are wild chickens all over this island? Literally, all
over the island.

The chickens in this photo closed in on us like a pack of hungry wolves
while we were eating lunch at Secret Falls on the Wailua River. As we were
about to leave, one of the roosters announced some new additions to the family.
We approached to see a hen leaving three eggs in this little nest between some
rocks.

If I were a chicken, I'd want to live here too.

Meet Another Chicken Blogger

2006-02-08T20:57:00.000-08:00

Sign of the Shovel writes about chickens, composting, and more at her blog. Today's topics:

The noise a full-grown hen will make. "Now that my hens are laying, they are braying. A classic BRAW-brap-brap-brap-BRAW that can be heard all the way down the street. "

Yeah, I hear you. My girls love to announce the arrival of the first egg of the day, and sometimes they just like to announce whatever's just flown into their silly little heads. Fortunately, they don't start until well after daybreak, but there have been mornings when I've left my toasty bed a bit earlier than I would have liked to go let them out. I don't want the neighbors to complain, although if they ever did, we'd have a serious talk about the decibel levels of the dogs on our street, most of whom don't wait until sunrise to begin their orations.

And: "Thanks to the birds, the backyard composting operation is starting to become slightly earnest for an urban yard...I clean out the chicken coop completely every other week, generating three wheelbarrows full of straw and chicken droppings every time."

Now, tell me, chicken people: what's your litter management system? I'm a believer in the deep litter method, which I devoted about five minutes to studying before adopting it. There's probably a more sophisticated way to do this, but my process is:

Use pine shavings as litter. Nice and clean, smells good, slow to break down.

Rake it around regularly. Add fresh regularly. Don't shovel it out much.

Over time, the litter accumulates and the droppings break down by themselves.

From time to time--maybe once a month, maybe once every couple of months--I scoop out a few wheelbarrows full and take it to the compost pile. I scoop out anything that's wet (a little rain can seep in between the boards of my coop, and hens can get sneezy from the mold) and anything that's very manure-intensive. But in general, I just keep a nice deep layer that breaks down constantly, and I add more pine shavings often.

The old litter, as I said, goes on the compost pile, where it gets mixed with chipped garden waste and dried leaves. The kitchen scraps get fed to the worms or the chickens. The chickens love to dig around in the compost pile looking for worms and bugs, so it continues to get worked over once it's left the coop.

Of course, I only have four hens, not a dozen. But this works for me.

What breed of chicken?

2006-01-31T09:46:00.000-08:00

In the comments, Bob asked what kind of chickens we have, so here goes:

Bess

2006-01-31T09:40:00.000-08:00

Bess is also an Auracana mix (see info on Dolley below) and she's very much the baby of the group. She has more personality than the rest of them put together--she loves to fly up to our shoulders or jump waist-high to get a treat out of our hands. She's the most voracious snail-eater of the bunch and has gotten the others interested in them too, for which we are very grateful. She lays very round little green eggs. I think she was the last to start laying.

This week (and remember, it's winter) she's laying an average of 3.5 eggs per week.

Dolley

2006-01-31T09:35:00.000-08:00

Araucana? Ameraucana? Easter Egger? Mutt? Much has been written about the mixture of breeds you might get if you buy a chick from a hatchery with any of these labels attached to her. Ours came from Belt Hatchery, and there are similarities to some of the "pure" Araucana photos I've seen on line, but she's clearly a mixture. She lays beautiful light blue eggs, and she's very sweet and smart and brave--she's always the one to chase the cats out of the yard so they can all forage in peace. She's sort of the second-in-command behind Eleanor.

4.25 eggs/week in January.

Abigail

2006-01-31T09:30:00.000-08:00

Golden-Laced Wyandotte. A beautiful bird. Lays very pale brown eggs, which are also a bit longer and narrower than Eleanor's. She's the most skittish of all our chickens, but as you can see, it's not like it's impossible to get near her or anything. She's just a little shy. Because we only have four chickens, it's easy for us to make an extra effort with her, as Scott is doing in this picture.

3.5 eggs/week in January.

Eleanor

2006-01-31T09:26:00.000-08:00

Rhode Island Red, a classic. 10 months old in this picture. A very reliable layer of dark brown eggs. She was also the first to start laying. She's very sweet-tempered--smart and curious and very much the leader.

5.5 eggs/week in January.

The Battery Hen Welfare Trust

2006-01-30T20:38:00.000-08:00

Oh, my goodness. You have never seen anything as sweet or as sad as these skinny cage-raised hens who have now been rescued and sent off to live a happy life in the countryside. Why don't we have something like this in the US?

Well, if you are in the UK, you probably already know that you can adopt a hen who would otherwise be headed for slaughter at the end of her short period of peak egg-laying production. This group has saved an incredible 11,457 hens in 2005.

The most poignant part of the site for me is the list of care tips for these rescued hens, which include:

"The hens have stood in a tiny cage for a year, so their muscles are not strong. They will struggle to jump up to a roost and usually sleep in a heap on the floor. (A ramp placed up to the roost is a useful way to encourage them to go up). However, it doesn't take long for legs to strengthen and you will see a difference usually within a couple of weeks.

and:

"The most obvious problem with the hens is that many come out almost totally featherless. Feathers will, usually, begin to re-grow within weeks though some take longer. The main points to be aware of with naked hens are extremes of temperature, ie they will feel the cold, wet and wind more keenly and can also easily suffer from sunburn, especially as they relish sunbathing and don't know when they've had enough!"

Battery Hens - The Battery Hen Welfare Trust

Egg Cups

2006-01-29T19:54:00.000-08:00

Check out this amazing site devoted to egg cups. They are more art than serving piece here, which seems only right. I have yet to ever soft-boil an egg, set it in an egg cup, and crack the top off with a spoon (ugh! It really doesn't appeal to me!) but I have found that the absolute best way to display an egg that has just arrived from the henhouse is to set it in an egg cup. We have three; I wish we had more.

This blog is in Spanish, and as far as I can tell, the bloggers are in Brussels. It looks like people are sending them egg cups from all over. Check it out here:

Una huevera al dia

Dentists for Chickens

2006-01-27T11:26:00.000-08:00

I just got back from the dentist myself (why, oh why, are we still drilling and filling? In this modern age, why isn't there a pill or a laser beam or something?), anyway, I don't really want to talk about that, but I do thank See My Chickens for picking up this BBC story about Beryl and Ginger, a couple of hens saved from slaughter who needed their beaks repaired so they could eat properly. Hens lay more eggs during their first year, and after that, when they are less productive, a commercial egg producer will usually--well, you know. Let's not speak of that, either.

And although the article does not say this specifically, chickens in these commercial environments often undergo a beak trimming to keep them from pecking at one another. Of course, they would not peck if they were allowed to live a normal, happy, uncrowded, unstressful life, but that's rarely the case on an egg farm. So I'm assuming that the beak restoration was necessary because the beaks had been trimmed.

Kudos to the Jaybeth Animal Sanctuary in Suffolk for taking them in.

BBC NEWS UK England Suffolk Denture expert to fix hen beaks

Are you into chicks?

2006-01-26T18:02:00.000-08:00

Call it nostalgia, call it crass commercialism, call it what you will. It's almost that time of year again, and you know what I'm talking about. The baby chicks are going to start arriving in feed stores soon. I can feel it.

It would not be prudent for me to bring home any more peeps from the feed store. Four chickens are enough. It would be difficult to integrate young uns into our established flock. We're out of town too much this spring to be raising chicks in the bathtub. Etc, etc.

But I pulled out this baby photo of Eleanor and Abigail and it was too much. Rather than buy more chicks, I'm making T-shirts. If you want one (or a tote bag, or a mouse pad, or...well, you get the idea), check out the Humboldt Hens shop at CafePress. Happy shopping!

Meet Beanie

2006-01-24T14:52:00.000-08:00

It gives me such pleasure to find other chicken blogs out there. Today I bring you the brilliant Beanie, who just in the last few months has learned not just how to peck at a string, but indeed how to pull on it. Beanie is brought to us by Jim, who writes this about himself:

"My name is Jim. I am the one who discovered Beanie. Since she was such a special chicken, I decided to tell her story in a Blog format so others could share in what I am discovering."

Unfortunately, I'm not able to watch some of the most recent videos (technical difficulties?) but do browse around and watch Beanie do the chicken dance or dream of going to the moon.

Beanie's Blog

Why didn't you SAY you wanted a shell?

2006-01-23T16:12:00.000-08:00

Much to my relief, Bess laid an egg with a shell today. I hope that was just a fluke. She seems to be feeling fine. Here she is with Abigail and Eleanor, waiting for a scratch fix from Scott.

Bess laid a soft-shelled egg

2006-01-21T20:14:00.000-08:00

Actually, it's a no-shelled egg. The one on the left is a normal egg from Bess. The one on the right is what she produced today. (the spots are just dirt from us handling it.) It's surrounded by a membrane that's about the consistency of latex, but more fragile.

Bess was acting like she was feeling bad this afternoon--all puffed up, not moving much, kind of a strange posture--and I was afraid she was eggbound. (this would have meant that she had an egg inside of her that she couldn't get out. It's a dangerous condition and the home remedy involves warm oil and a gentle massage you-know-where.)

But eventually she went into her nesting box and produced this. She did seem to feel a little better afterwards, but she went back to the box for a while as if she had another one. Nothing came before nightfall, and she seemed to be feeling well enough that I put them to bed as usual. (If I really thought she was sick, I'd bring her in and we'd spend the night in the bathroom--me and Bess, that is. Scott usually thinks I overreact to things like this.)

As far as I can tell, sometimes a chicken lays an egg without a shell for no reason at all. Sometimes it's a vitamin D deficiency, and it's certainly true that they haven't seen the sun much lately--until today, that is. I added a little poultry vitamin solution to their drinking water just in case.

Oh, and if you were wondering--an egg forms from the inside out--first the yolk, then the white, then the membrane, then the shell. So that's how an egg can come out without a shell--something went wrong with the process right at the end. I also recently learned that eggs come out pointed end first, until they reach their final turn in the track, when they spin themselves around and emerge into the world rounded end first.

2006-01-21T20:09:00.000-08:00

The shell-less egg. We had to break the membrane and make sure everything looked normal inside, of course. The whites were so thick that they didn't spill out at all.

In the Compost Pile

2006-01-18T15:23:00.000-08:00

It's hard to get a good picture of them all together, but I at least managed to get three of them facing the same direction (Abigail's hiding in the back.) They love nothing more than scratching around in the compost pile for worms. You can see how full Dolley's crop gets (she's the one on the right)--she packs enough food in there to last her a week, then sits and digests it all night.

Veggie chickens!

2006-01-17T17:43:00.000-08:00

A Christmas present from Mom...not yet sure where they will live in the garden...I figured I'd wait until the worst of the rain was over before leaving them outdoors.

You only THINK you've seen an egg

2006-01-16T19:10:00.000-08:00

Check out this blog, where a high-powered microscope shows the hidden beauty of any number of ordinary household objects:

Amateur Microscopy: The Incredible, Edible Egg

Henry Has Six Wives

2006-01-14T20:17:00.000-08:00

Accidental Smallholder is getting new chickens. It's always disruptive to introduce anyone new to the brood, especially when it's (gasp!) a man!

Henry looks like a fine fellow, and I hope his gentle disposition remains. I get asked about this a lot, so I'll mention it here: you don't need a rooster to lay eggs. A hen will lay an egg every day, cock or no cock. If there does happen to be a Henry around, the egg has the potential of hatching into a chick. (a process that takes a few weeks and a hen with the desire to do nothing but sit on the egg day in and day out.) Otherwise, it's just an infertile egg.

The Accidental Smallholder :: Diary

Pears

2006-01-13T15:30:00.000-08:00

Rain, rain, and more rain. We're in for at least 10 days of it. Poor girls, there's not much for them to do on a rainy day. I run outside and feed them pears to console them. They don't know about chocolate, so the pears are pretty exciting.

Another chicken blog!

2006-01-11T10:44:00.000-08:00

Peter in Devon is blogging about chickens, pigs, geese, and more. Check it out here.

Keeping Chickens at Home.

And in response to a question about what we do with all those eggs--on a good day, we get four eggs, one from each hen. But on average, we probably get 3 eggs a day, maybe 20 eggs a week.

We have eggs for breakfast a couple times a week, so that uses up 8 or so.

Sometimes Scott makes a fabulous breakfast thing called a Dutch pancake, which I think is made of eggs, flour, and milk. It bakes in the oven and rises slightly like a souffle. He puts fruit it in. So that uses up a few more eggs.

Sometimes we make egg salad. It is hard to hard-boil fresh eggs, because there is so little air inside the egg when it's fresh that the eggs are difficult to peel. But we do it anyway, and that uses up a few more eggs.

Then we give the rest away. A dozen eggs makes a great hostess gift. I take some to painting class to share with my classmates. I leave them with the neighbors to make up for the noise the hens sometimes make first thing in the morning, when they're all excited about laying their eggs.

And when we're out of town, the kid in the neighborhood who hen-sits for us gets to keep the eggs as part of the deal.

Poached Scrambled Eggs

2006-01-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

An interesting story in the NYT about making scrambled eggs the way you'd make poached eggs: by dropping them into boiling water and letting them cook quickly, then pulling them out with a strainer. Sounded quick, fresh, and interesting (and the technique works best with freshly-laid eggs, whose whites are still very thick), so we tried it this morning. I wish I could say that that I'd discovered a fantastic, perfect new method for cooking eggs, but no. The eggs were bland and uninteresting. Amazing the difference that pat of butter in the skillet makes. I'll stick to my usual scrambling technique, thank you.

The Way We Eat: Which Came First? - New York Times

Eleanor as Marilyn

2006-01-09T19:43:00.000-08:00

For a while there, we were bringing Eleanor inside every day to clean out her wounded toe in the bathtub. This is her ancestral home, the bathtub where she was raised under heat lamps from a tiny peep.

So after we cleaned her claw, we'd let her walk around the bathroom for a few minutes while it all dried out. At some point she discovered that there are few pleasures in life as satisfying as backing one's rump up to a heating vent and letting the warm air ruffle one's feathers. She stood doing this for so long that there was time for me to run up two flights of stairs and get the camera.

Photos!

2006-01-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

I've had trouble posting photos for the last couple of months, and I've just now fixed it. HA! OK, this is not a great photo of the girls, but I'm just so excited to have this working again that I'll put up anything. Here they are, gathered around for a handful of scratch. We haven't had much rain lately, so they've been very pleased to get to spend so much time outdoors.

Testing the Eggstractor

2006-01-07T15:53:00.000-08:00

Has anyone ever tried one? Put your hard-boiled eggs inside, pump, and out it comes, peeled and clean. How does it do it? Fortunately, Connecticut's Coverage You Can Count On is on the story.

WTNH.com - Testing the Eggstractor

Where would I be without Ricky Gervais?

2006-01-05T19:47:00.000-08:00

OK, if you don't get this, I can't explain it. But if you're one of us, go check out Episode 4, where, in the first segment, they debate the merits of the Heifer International program I wrote about recently, in which you can purchase chickens (or, in this case, a goat) for a poor family somewhere else in the world.

Guardian Unlimited Ricky Gervais Ricky Gervais podcast

The Century Egg

2006-01-02T16:18:00.000-08:00

This just in from Wikipedia. And I thought our egg recipes were clever.

The century egg, a.k.a. preserved egg, thousand-year egg, thousand-year-old egg, is a Chinese delicacy made by preserving duck (or less commonly chicken) eggs in a mixture of clay, ash, salt and lime for around only 100 days, despite the name. The yolk of the egg is concentrically variegated in pale and dark green colors while the egg white is dark brown and transparent like cola. The yolk is creamy and somewhat cheese-like in flavor with a strong aroma. The egg white has a gelatinous texture similar to cooked egg white, however with very little taste. The surface of the egg white is sometimes patterned with a snow-flake pattern.

Has anyone ever tried one? Do we dare make them ourselves?

Century egg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

All I Want for Christmas..

2005-12-20T08:48:00.000-08:00

That's right--Heifer International will take your $20 donation and turn it into a flock of baby chicks who will feed and delight an impoverished family.

You can also give honeybees, llamas, goats, cows, and more.

Cabbage on a Stick

2005-12-19T10:19:00.000-08:00

This just in from Allotment Lady. I've tried hanging them on a string, that works, too. It does keep the girls happy and must make for very healthy eggs.

Allotment Lady

Eleanor's Pedicure

2005-12-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

Or is it a manicure? Or both?

A software glitch has kept me from uploading pictures for a week, but I've figured out an awkward workaround so that I can share this image of Eleanor with her little band-aid. Her foot seems to be fine, although she's probably due for another cleaning just to be sure it heals properly.

I Dream of Chickens

2005-12-08T11:44:00.000-08:00

I now have a recurring chicken dream. It always involves taking the chickens somewhere (which we have never actually done) and them getting lost. I spend most of the dream looking for them, and wherever we are, there are lots of chickens so sometimes I can't tell whether I have found, say, Eleanor, or another Rhode Island Red. So I spend a lot of time walking up to chickens and saying, "Are you Eleanor?"

In this most recent dream, we were only able to round up one hen, and two others were mailed to us, alive and perfectly well, in a box(!), but Bess was gone. Somehow the dream fast-forwarded many years, and a knock came at the door. A teenage girl was standing there--not a tattooed, pierced, punk rock teenager, but a sort of 1950s, boarding school kind of teenager with honey-colored hair. She said, "I'm Bess, and I've been looking for you," and we fell all over her, saying, "Bess! You grew up into a girl!" She had been raised by a family in Albuquerque, but she'd always wanted to come back here, to her old home.

I woke up before we could take her out back and show her her old bed in the chicken coop.

Eleanor Broke a Nail

2005-12-06T09:44:00.000-08:00

Yeah, you laugh, but when Scott went outside yesterday morning to let the chickens out, there was blood on their roost, and not just a little blood. Scared us to death. The chickens all looked OK and it was not until we noticed blood on Eleanor's claw that we had any idea who was injured. Unfortunately, a chicken's claws are used primarily for scratching around the dirt and muck. How are we going to keep this from just filling up with grime? Has anybody out there had experience with this sort of thing?

Chicken Love

2005-12-03T12:02:00.000-08:00

We've had a little sun this week and the chickens are just overjoyed to get out and enjoy it. Now that winter is here and it's not quite as much fun to sit outside with them, we have started to let them out by themselves as long as we are downstairs (in the morning, eating breakfast, for instance) so that we could hear them if there was any trouble.

So they get to forage around in the garden by themselves for maybe 20 minutes at a stretch. The amazing thing is that they actually seem to miss us when they're out by themselves. I go outside with my coffee and call out, "Girls!" and they come running, putting their heads down and flapping their wings a little so they can get up some speed. I've had three of them up on my shoulder at once, cooing in my ears and picking at strands of my hair.

A chicken doesn't really know how to express affection--they are not huggers--so the way they show their interest is by picking at you. I kneel down and let them pick lint off my sweater for a few minutes, and then the lovefest is over and they head back to the compost pile to dig for worms.

Egg Cups

2005-11-28T11:56:00.000-08:00

More 5x7 paintings for this Artists Challenge I'm doing. The poor girls are stuck indoors today; there's a ferocious storm outside.

Everywhere There's Lots of Chickens, Leading Chicken Lives...

2005-11-14T22:04:00.000-08:00

As if he hadn't already done enough to woo me, what with all those songs that changed the world and defined my life, now Paul McCartney has to go and show compassion for little chickens.

Thanks to Go Veg for this quote, and for this useful information about the intellectual capacity of a chicken:

"Chickens understand sophisticated intellectual concepts, learn from watching each other, demonstrate self-control, worry about the future, and even have cultural knowledge that is passed from generation to generation. Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says, 'As a trick at conferences, I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about monkeys.'”

My girls worry about the future? What do they worry about? Supreme Court nominees? The inequitable tax structure? Peak oil and its implications on the future availability of chicken scratch?

The only thing that keeps me from bringing them in to roost along my bedpost at night is the belief that they don't worry about things--that they are chickens, and as such, they roost in the rafters and scratch in the dirt and live in the moment and don't feel the dark weight of the world upon them and don't need to be comforted by the sound of their loved ones breathing next to them in the night to get through it all.

And what's this about cultural knowledge that's passed from generation to generation? If Eleanor had a brood, would she teach her youngsters to fear the lids of cardboard boxes (we have no idea what this is about) and check my pockets for apple cores? Would the little peeps learn that they have nothing to fear from cats, but have every reason to duck for cover when the Fed Ex plane flies over at five in the afternoon?

Paintings of the Girls

2005-11-12T17:06:00.000-08:00

These are all Eleanor except the one that's Abigail. Little 5 x 7 paintings I did all at once in one evening's session as part of a local artists' challenge. (I'm just a student, as you can see, but it was fun to participate...15 little paintings in 30 days...)

Someone asked how I know whose egg is whose. All four birds lay different eggs. Eleanor's (Rhode Island Red) are dark brown, a little reddish. Abigail's (Golden-Laced Wyandotte) are light brown and kind of skinny. Bess and Dolley are both Araucana mixes and their eggs are similar--Bess's are greenish and small and round (like her) and Dolley's are a little less round and a little more blue.

We know who lays which egg because they all started laying at different times, and we'd watch which hen was going in and out of the nesting box as if she was about to lay--so it was easy to tell, when an egg appeared there later, that it was hers.
I imagine that if we had four of the same breed it would be really hard to tell the eggs apart.

In other news: Dolley is losing some of the soft little feathers on her butt. It seemed to happen all at once. No sign of mites, so I suspect picking. They had to spend the day cooped up yesterday (literally) and I think it happened then, out of boredom. I hadn't noticed it before today.

Poor girls. I'll keep an eye on it. The feathers that Bess lost on her neck are growing back.

Running the Numbers

2005-11-09T12:23:00.000-08:00

Comptroller's Report from Scott

It's been seven weeks since my last report. Total production is 235 eggs (19.58 dozen).
(Editor's note: If we've spent $750 on coop construction, feed and supplies--probably a low estimate--that works out to to $3.15 per egg. And worth every penny.)

ELEANOR - Rhode Island Red
Age: 223 days
Age at first egg: 138 days
Total eggs: 80
Lays eggs 93% of the time.

DOLLEY - Americauna mix
Age: 216 days
Age at first egg: 144 days
Total eggs: 61
Lays eggs 84% of the time

ABIGAIL - Golden-laced Wyandott
Age: 223 days
Age at first egg: 160
Total eggs: 55
Lays eggs 86% of the time

BESS - Americauna mix
Age: 216 days
Age at first egg: 168 days
Total eggs: 40
Lays eggs 82% of the time

FLOCK STATISTICS
First day with eggs from all four hens: September 21 (hens 168 - 175 days old)

Since then:
Days with 4 eggs: 27 (55%)
Days with 3 eggs: 16 (33%)
Days with 2 eggs: 4 (8%)
Days with 1 egg: 1 (2%)
Days with 0 eggs: 1 (2%)

Ooooooh!

2005-11-08T22:25:00.000-08:00

We don't get many holy-cow, knock-your-socks-off, honey-come-look-at-this sunsets in Humboldt County. What we usually get is increasingly dark fog. So imagine my excitement when this happened outside my attic window.

On a more chicken-related note: Don't you people worry that your chickens are cold? I mean, I know they're supposed to be OK in winter, especially since we don't get hard freezes ever, but still--aren't they cold out there? Wouldn't they rather come in here and sleep by the heater? Last night our cat woke us up by puking up a hairball on our bed (under the covers, in fact)--so how much worse could the chickens be?

...and it keeps changing...

2005-11-08T22:24:00.000-08:00

...minute by minute...

2005-11-08T22:19:00.000-08:00

Chickens in the Rain

2005-11-06T10:11:00.000-08:00

The poor dears are not very happy about all the rain we've been getting. They can't get outside much, so we go visit them instead. They take short dashes out into the rain, then rush for cover and shake their feathers off. Sigh. It's going to be a long winter.

2005-11-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

Fortunately, the rest of the shed (the part not screened in as their chicken coop) has a dirt floor, so they have this one small dry space where they can take a dust bath. The dust baths are supposed to prevent mites, and mites are more of a concern in the winter, so it's more important than ever that they get to do this.

Speaking of mites, if you look closely you can see that Bess is still missing some feathers on her neck. I was worried that she had mites, but there are no signs of them. Someone suggested that maybe the other birds are picking at the feathers on her face when she's in the nesting box and they want her to get out so they can use it. (There are two boxes, but one of them is, for some reason, better than the other and they all want to use that one.)

Anyway, a few of the feathers are growing back in, but we're keeping an eye on it...

"Lucy is my life."

2005-11-04T09:40:00.000-08:00

I love this story from the Humane Society of a chicken that was evacuated to the Astrodome:

"We do know of at least one hen who rests safely. Her guardian was evidently bused to the Houston Astrodome evacuee shelter holding the animal under his arm. The beleaguered shelter staff may have thought it strange that a man walked in with a chicken. But if they did, we have no report that they gave him any trouble. To their credit, the shelter staff simply took the chicken to be processed along with the other animals.

A staff member later approached the man, asking, 'Are you the owner of the chicken?' He replied indignantly, 'That's not a chicken. That's my Lucy! Lucy is my life.' He had been with her all her life, 'from a peep,' he said.

Lucy, meanwhile, heard her guardian's voice from way in the back and started clucking happily as they were reunited, the two finding solace in a welter of broken families."

I Love Lucy: One Chicken's Story of Rescue

So yeah, about that...

2005-11-03T12:08:00.000-08:00

So about this thing I haven't been talking about. I do have a couple of things to say about it after all. I'll say what it is very quietly so no one will overhear: avian flu. Yeah, that. Is this thing a threat to our backyard chickens? Could men in white biohazard suits pull up in an unmarked van someday and demand to see our birds? I hope not. What else can I do? Obsess over it and fan the flames of fear? That's won't do any good. What if, like those WMDs, we get all worked up for nothing and end up wasting a lot of lives and resources for no good reason? Perhaps this will turn out like Y2K: a few problems, all of them solveable and not terrible expensive, so that the whole thing ends up being a non-event. Good deal.

Well anyway, here's what I have to say on the subject:

1. There sure are a lot of interesting chicken photos out there, such as this one from the New York Times.

2. Sacramento Gardening has posted a very helpful list of reminders for owners of backyard flocks, including the suggestion that you keep food and water under cover, and keep the chicken's run covered, to protect your flock from the droppings of migratory birds.

3. Our government is developing a national system for tracking livestock "from birth to slaughter" so they can be identified quickly if there's an outbreak of disease. Right now, according to the USDA's website, animals like backyard chickens are exempt: "Animals that never leave a premises do not need to be identified. However, animal owners are encouraged to identify their animals and their premises, regardless of the number of animals present, since many animal diseases may be spread whether an animal leaves its home premises or not." But if you take your horse on a trail, or take your cow or pig or turkey to a county fair to show them, you're covered under these new rules. Check it out, read the draft plan, and submit your comments here:

National Animal Identification System

Eleanor and Abigail

2005-11-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

Another chicken painting. There will be many more to come, I'm sure...

Halloween at the Crazy Chicken House

2005-10-31T21:43:00.000-08:00

While the chickens slumbered on, oblivious to the children running door to door begging for treats (an activity they would wholeheartedly endorse), I donned my witch hat and pounded away at the keyboard in the attic (top window) and Scott organized his books in the library (second story, right). As for the other witches and bats floating around the house--I thought it best to leave them alone.

Halloween Chicken

2005-10-31T17:10:00.000-08:00

From the same Yahoo story below.

Don't try this at home

2005-10-31T15:58:00.000-08:00

As you may have noticed, I have made a deliberate choice not to talk about that particular illness that is striking those in the bird community worldwide. I just don't know what to say at this point. It's impossible to predict where the whole thing will go and how it might affect backyard chickens, who (at least in my case) live in a pretty closed environment.

So while I avoid the subject, I find some of the images really interesting and I like it that the media is suddenly showing us all the ways in which people live with chickens. These photos come from the Philippines, where you can buy a little dyed chick in a market. See Yahoo for more.

Poor chicks. They are not toys.

Should we be worried about this?

2005-10-29T16:22:00.000-07:00

Bess, our silly little Auracana mix, has suddenly (we think it's sudden, anyway) lost all the feathers on her cheeks and neck. She used to have a little "beard" right there, and now it's gone. She's only 7 months old--too early for a molt, yes? Is it possible the other birds are picking on her? She is certainly lowest on the pecking order, although it seems to be a peaceable and, for the most part, non-violent pecking order. But every now and then, especially as they are settling down to bed, Bess gets out of line and gets a peck. I've never seen them pull out feathers before, though. Hmmmmm...

Eggs in Ecuador

2005-10-28T15:30:00.000-07:00

I was just looking through some photographs from our trip to Ecuador last year and found this photograph of an egg shop in Quito. There were several tiny little egg stores like this. If you buy eggs, they put them in a plastic bag and you take them home like that.

Eggs in the back of a cab

2005-10-28T15:28:00.000-07:00

Going to market.

Eleanor and the Matrix

2005-10-27T10:58:00.000-07:00

This just in from Scott, whose voice is heard all too rarely on this blog. (Not to mention his digital photo editing skills. Freaky.)

I recently had a revelation that chickens are from the Matrix, the setting of the films of the same name. As if it's not enough of a superpower to lay an egg 300 days a year, chickens are like a real-life Neo and Agent Smith. As you've seen from the blog photos, chickens are in constant motion. It turns out they have great eyesight, too, and tremendously fast reflexes.

When Lucas was here, the hens hopped up on one of the outdoor chairs to join us. Little Lucus, just eight months old and very interested in the chickens, waved his arms about wildly, trying to touch them. Eleanor and Abigail eyed him carefully and gently bobbed in and out, hardly seeming to move, staying millimeters beyond his flailing fists.

I thought of this scene from the Matrix. Compare the photos and see for yourself. One is Agent Jones, the other is Eleanor. Like Agent Jones, Eleanor turned her head around to check things out with her other eye, a common chicken strategy.

I guess with their fast bird metabolism, they viewed Lucas in slow motion and easily dodged the random baby movements.

Fortunately, in addition to a fast metabolism, they share another characteristic with all their avian cousins: bird brains. Or we all might be in trouble.

Sing it, sister.

2005-10-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm not the sort of person to circulate silly little animated videos on the Internet, but this one came to me and I can't imagine a poultry lover out there who won't love it. It's from MSN's American Greetings site. Check it out here, and turn up the volume on those speakers.

Chickens In Motion

2005-10-25T18:00:00.000-07:00

It's impossible to get a picture of them all standing still, but at least I managed to get them with their heads in the air (a noise had just startled them) instead of their standard beak-to-the-ground, tail-in-the-air posture.

They're starting to wander into our side garden, something we hadn't allowed previously. They might make a mess, but little Bess goes after the snails with such a deliberate viciousness that I can't resist...